What criteria would you use to determine developmentally appropriate instructional strategies?

Grades K-3

• understand how to create a structured day with opportunities for movement
• design academic activities that suit the attention span of young learners
• instructional activities connect with the children’s immediate world
• draw on key content from more than one subject area
• include hands-on experiences and manipulatives that help students learn
• teach and model norms of social interactions (e.g., consideration, cooperation, responsibility, empathy)
• educational experiences that help students develop more realistic expectations and understandings of their environment
• special plans for students who require extra help in exercising self-control among their peers or who have exceptional needs or abilities

Grades 4-8 

• build on students’ command of basic skills and understandings
• provide intensive support for students who lack basic skills as defined in state-adopted academic content standards for students
• teach from grade-level texts
• design learning activities to extend students’ concrete thinking and foster abstract reasoning and problem-solving skills
• help students develop learning strategies to cope with increasingly challenging academic curriculum
• assist students, as needed, in developing and practicing strategies for managing time and completing assignments
• develop students’ skills for working in groups to maximize learning
• build on peer relationships and support students in trying new roles and responsibilities in the classroom
• support students’ taking of intellectual risks such as sharing ideas that may include errors
• distinguish between misbehavior and over-enthusiasm
• respond appropriately to students who are testing limits and students who alternatively assume and reject responsibility

Grades 9-12 

• establish intellectually challenging academic expectations
• provide opportunities for students to develop advanced thinking and problem-solving skills
• frequently communicate course goals, requirements, and grading criteria to students and families
• help students to understand connections between the curriculum and life beyond high school
• communicate the consequences of academic choices in terms of future career, school and life options
• support students in assuming increasing responsibility for learning
• encourage behaviors important for work such as being on time and completing assignments
• understand adolescence as a period of intense social peer pressure to conform
• support signs of students’ individuality while being sensitive to what being “different” means for high school students